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Governor Jan Brewer today lauded an annual report from the Government Transformation Office highlighting its efforts to improve, modernize and streamline Arizona state agencies.

“One of my priorities in public service since day one has been to make state government run as efficiently and cost-effectively for Arizona taxpayers as possible,” said Governor Brewer. “I created the Government Transformation Office for that very purpose, and it continues to successfully fulfill its mission, cutting red tape and improving the way the state accomplishes its work.”

Governor Brewer established the Government Transformation Office in August 2012 as part of her continued mission to streamline and modernize state government operations. A division of the Arizona Department of Administration, the Office is charged with eliminating inefficiencies and redundancies by implementing private-sector innovations and practices into state operations, with the ultimate goal of saving money and improving the quality of services to Arizona taxpayers.

The Government Transformation Office recently issued its annual report summarizing major accomplishments for its first full year of operation, including improved service, capacity and increased learning within the Arizona Department of Health Services; Arizona Department of Environmental Quality; Arizona State Land Department; Arizona Department of Real Estate; Arizona Department of Revenue; and Arizona Department of Water Resources.

Each of these agencies is working to train employees in the fundamentals of the “lean methodology,” employed by private industry organizations to dramatically improve service, cost and quality. These principles – coupled with additional ongoing efforts to reduce red tape and excessive bureaucracy – are paying dividends within these agencies.

Examples of agency improvements outlined in the Government Transformation Office annual report include:

The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality is implementing reforms to ensure a quicker employee recruitment process, reducing downtime in the agency due to unfilled positions. As a result, ADEQ will be able to fill open positions in 44 days instead of 95 days.

The Arizona Department of Real Estate has reduced the processing time for 90% of licensing disclosures from 42 days to 2 days – a 95% improvement.

The Arizona Department of Health Services has streamlined and standardized the screening and referral processes for its home visiting program. Now, child-health professionals who visit homes of new parents now also screen for chronic disease and lead paint dangers – effectively steering families into managing their own diseases while reducing money spent on health care.

Lead time (the total elapsed time from the beginning to the end of a process) within agencies has been reduced across-the-board by an average of 59%, enabling government’s customers to experience significant improvement in the amount of time it takes to receive key services.